This is something odd I've noticed over the last three or four weeks. I seem to have used up large chunks of my hard drive on I don't know what. At the moment I'm using my newish Dell 8300 with a 120 gig hard drive running XP Home, 1024 MB RAM, FX5900XT video card, 3 Ghz P4 with HT. I've got the usual collection of MP3s, videos, documents etc (about 2.5 gig total) and a bunch of programs from Norton to burning software. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing I haven't regularly used on this PC or previous ones. The machine runs as smooth as a certain new member's username and never misses a beat.

However, I regularly run disk defrag as part of my weekly-ish clean up and scan routine and I've noticed that my hard drive space has dropped from around 85-90% free to about 40% free. The only things I have done in the last few weeks are install the new video card (from a 5200) and buy a new monitor, keyboard and mouse. I find it hard to believe that these items (or rather the software needed for them) have had such an impact on my hard drive.

Thoughts anyone? And if I'm clutching at straws here tell me but could system restore have something to do with this?

Do a google search for an app called treesize pro. Install, then right click on C: drive and click treesize. It will give you a graphics and text display of folder sizes so you can see how much is taken by what.

Do a google search for an app called treesize pro. Install, then right click on C: drive and click treesize. It will give you a graphics and text display of folder sizes so you can see how much is taken by what.

Treesize wont show system restore data.

if you go into my computer and rightclick/properties on the hard drive.. and press the disc cleanup button. that will give a breakdown of things like internet cache, temp files etc... also under the more options tab, the delete all but most recent system restore point will free up shedloads of space

OK, one at a time.

helpmedisappear, it was at the back of my mind too. I'll try that.

mannyo, that sound very handy, I'll give it a go.

Neo_VR, I do include disk cleanup in my routine but I haven't spotted that option.

So none of you reckon the new hardware additions have anything to do with this? Although, thinking slightly laterally, adding new hardware and drivers would have created more restore points I suppose.

Right, off to break my pride and joy.

(After the car, obviously.)

(And Mrs.rich1068, even more obviously )

Mannyo,

Excellent little program!

I haven't done anything else yet other than download the evaluation version and run it but interesting results. If I knew how to attach a scan it would make your eyes pop. Over 53k MB of my hard drive are taken over by a folder called ~ERAFSWD.TMP :eek:

A quick Google search tells me that it's the leftover of a program that I downloaded a few weeks ago called Eraser (recommended from somewhere but can't remember where) which I was going to use on my old PC before I got rid of it. It installed correctly, wasn't what I wanted and was uninstalled correctly. Apparently not. It's still hanging around The Eraser site (via Google) had this to say.

After running Eraser the free space on my drive was lost or reduced noticeably. How can I fix this?

You have 3 ways to help you reclaim the space:

Firstly,

It could be that either Eraser was terminated abnormally or the system crashed causing the temporary files to be lodged there and the temp Folder (~ERAFSWD.TMP) may have used up your diskspace. You can remove the folder

Delete all the porn from your recycle bin ?? :P

If you have uninstalled the program, it should be safe to just delete that folder.

Get a temp files cleaing proggy?

Delete all the porn from your recycle bin ?? :P

Can't be that Geoff, I burnt all the quality stuff to CD before I ermm.. er... I think I've said too much...

Rich,

Another quick fix when trying to free up some disc space is to use the windows find files option. Get it to look for any files over 50mb (or any largeish number of your choice) and see what it finds...

Temp files can take up lots of space, as can any movies you may have downloaded...

as can any movies you may have downloaded...

Don't know what you mean and anyway Mrs.rich1068 installed NetNanny before she started working away alot :(

Cheers guys. Problem solved yet again thanks to the Briskoda collective

Now back to 91% free disk space and I've reduced System Restore to 3% (2905 MB) Let me know if you don't think this is enough. According to TreeSize the files used by System Restore (System Volume Information) have gone from just over 10k MB to 740 MB.

:cheers: especially to mannyo.

Back again.

It seems like Mr. ~ERAFSWD.TMP doesn't take no for an answer. The file has recreated itself and so far (since Saturday) has become a rather portly 39 GB.

I've noticed that the Eraser file is still in my Program Files folder and also if I run msconfig under the Start Up tag he gets a mention too.

How do I get rid of this thing once and for all? Delete the program file? Disable it at start up? Leave cheese out?

Manny, save me.

disable it at startup... that should kerb its space muchin. then you should be able to delete the program folder

Xp eh... Control panel-Performance and maintainence-administrative tools-Services, then scrol down until you find eraser listed in one form or another, then via right click and properties you can control when and how it starts.

Sounds like it may be in the registry (I assumed you have uninstalled Eraser properly) in which case you need a registry cleaner my boy, easy as chips and sorted in one one two.

Wise and merciful Master Kentish, can you recommend one?

If I disable at start up and then delete the folder might this cause problems? And even if it doesn't I just don't like the idea of fragments of something just left around. I want it removed!

I use RegCleaner, you can get it here..http://www.worldstart.com/weekly-download/archives/reg-cleaner4.3.htm